I'm the Detroit bureau chief for Forbes, which means I spend most of my time covering the automotive industry. But I also keep an eye on the rest of America's heartland—where stuff is manufactured and grown. I've been on the auto beat for more than 20 years at Forbes, Business Week and the Detroit Free Press. At the Boston Globe, I rode the tech bubble for a while, but I found there's nothing quite as fun as the auto beat. Whether you drive a car or not, everyone has an opinion about cars or car companies. What's yours?

Tesla's Gotcha Blog Catches New York Times Reporter Driving In Circles

Ford Motor’s Chief Executive Alan Mulally is fond of saying, “the data will set you free” when talking about business.

But another automotive CEO, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, has quite a different objective in mind.

He’s using data gleaned from one of his company’s high-tech, electric sedans to try to snare a New York Times reporter in a lie.

Musk and Times reporter John Broder have been engaged in a war of words since last Friday, when Broder published a damaging review of Tesla’s new Model S after an East Coast test-drive. Broder claimed he followed Tesla’s instructions, charging the vehicle at two newly installed super-charging facilities in Delaware and Connecticut, but still ran out of juice in the frigid weather, calling for a flatbed truck after the Tesla died.

Musk fought back on Twitter, calling the test a “fraud” and promised to show proof in an upcoming blog post.

At 2 a.m. this morning, he delivered a blow-by-blow critique of Broder’s test drive, complete with annotated charts that he said proved that Broder’s account was false. “When the facts didn’t suit his opinion, he simply changed the facts,” Musk wrote.

How does he know? “After a negative experience several years ago with ‘Top Gear,’ a popular automotive show, where they pretended that our car ran out of energy and had to be pushed back to the garage, we always carefully data log media drives,” Musk wrote.

So whether Broder knew it or not, the black box in the car he was testing had recorded every detail about his driving experience, and seemed to leave the journalist with some explaining to do.

For instance:

As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck.

Cruise control was never set to 54 mph as claimed in the article, nor did he limp along at 45 mph. Broder in fact drove at speeds from 65 mph to 81 mph for a majority of the trip and at an average cabin temperature setting of 72 F.

At the point in time that he claims to have turned the temperature down, he in fact turned the temperature up to 74 F.

Musk also wrote that once Broder reached the super-charging station in Connecticut with a display that said “0 miles remaining,” he drove in circles for over half a mile in a parking lot rather than plug it in. “When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in.”

Frankly, as an automotive reporter, I would have done the same thing. It’s important to know what happens when the battery eventually dies. If I were thinking about buying an electric car, I’d rather read about what to expect in a car review than to go through that anxiety myself on some deserted highway. It’s called reporting. UPDATE: In an email, Broder told New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer: “I was circling the parking lot in the service plaza looking for the unmarked and unlighted Supercharger port in the dark. I was not trying to drain the battery.”

But Musk thinks the cards were stacked against Tesla from the beginning, based on earlier stories by Broder expressing skepticism about EVs.

“While the vast majority of journalists are honest, some believe the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a salacious story,” he wrote. “In Mr. Broder’s case, he simply did not accurately capture what happened and worked very hard to force our car to stop running.”

A Times spokeswoman today reiterated that its story was “fair and accurate,” adding, “We are in the process of reviewing the specific claims in Tesla’s blog post and will respond to those when that review is complete.

But in a post Tuesday responding to Musk’s tweets and other accusations he made in a CNBC interview, Broder defended his account as accurate.

He also said this, which is important:

“Virtually everyone says that I should have plugged in the car overnight in Connecticut, particularly given the cold temperature. But the test that Tesla offered was of the Supercharger, not of the Model S, which we already know is a much-praised car. This evaluation was intended to demonstrate its practicality as a “normal use,” no-compromise car, as Tesla markets it. Now that Tesla is striving to be a mass-market automaker, it cannot realistically expect all 20,000 buyers a year (the Model S sales goal) to be electric-car acolytes who will plug in at every Walmart stop.”

This is exactly the point I made in a Forbes post on Monday. Electric cars are not going to replace internal combustion cars any time soon. Despite the marvelous things the Tesla can do (which apparently includes spying on its operators) it is not a no-compromise car. Stopping for an hour to recharge the car’s battery is a compromise, let’s face it.

That doesn’t mean EVs don’t have a place. For people who don’t need to drive more than a hundred or so miles on a daily basis, and who have a place to plug in their car overnight, it may well be an excellent choice.

I am not an EV-hater. I care about sustainability. I worry about the environment. I don’t want our country to be dependent on foreign oil.

But until the price of electric vehicles falls dramatically and there is a national network of charging stations as prevalent and easy to access as today’s gas stations, electric cars will be nothing more than niche vehicles.

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“Frankly, as an automotive reporter, I would have done the same thing. It’s important to know what happens when the battery eventually dies. If I were thinking about buying an electric car, I’d rather read about what to expect in a car review than to go through that anxiety myself on some deserted highway. It’s called reporting. ”

You’re foolishly avoiding the issue here. If Broder wanted to represent the challenges that are posed when the car DOES run out of juice, he would’ve written just that. “ I actually found it very difficult to completely kill the chage, as the car beat its own estimates several times. However, if you DO manage to run out of power, here’s what it will mean.”

So when you say you’d have done the same thing, you seem to imply that you would write and report dishonestly for your story, rather than simply adding to the article to show all possible outcomes.

You might be the first journalist I have ever seen that outright declared she would act dishonestly to get a story.

I hope Forbes looks at this article and conducts a review of the author, much like the NYT will do for Broder.

There are already several posts on social media sites on the suspect reporting from Forbes on this issue. It has been pointed out that this author is justifying misleading reporting by non-germane argument that electric cars have issues, and with emotional, rather than factual statements.

“Electric cars are not going to replace internal combustion cars any time soon.”

“For people who don’t need to drive more than a hundred or so miles on a daily basis, and who have a place to plug in their car overnight, it may well be an excellent choice.”

Seems like the vast majority of people commuting to work would fit into the category of people who don’t drive more than 100 miles a day and do have a place to plug-in their car.

If you mean “soon” as in within a year, then probably not. The number of EV’s is growing exponentially (if we are to believe this data: http://www.electricdrive.org/index.php?ht=d/sp/i/20952/pid/20952).

Let’s see what happens in five years.

p.s. Broder couldn’t see the charger station, so he drove around for half a mile in a circle. Hmm. How does he normally find a place to fill up with gas? http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/tesla-begins-east-cost-fast-charging-corridor/

“But until the price of electric vehicles falls dramatically and there is a national network of charging stations as prevalent and easy to access as today’s gas stations, electric cars will be nothing more than niche vehicles”

That seems to be a rebutable presumption. Let’s say the Model S gets 200-270 miles (which it does apparently, even when driven in cold or hot weather, or at 75 mph).

For the vast majority of people who can charge it overnight at home — i.e. nearly everyone with a single-family house and a decent number of people who live in MDUs — that’s a car you can take anywhere but on longer road trips. Now, with Superchargers, you can, in fact take it on road trips. For example, one could take it back and forth from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a single stop in between (or very comfortably with two) so long as there is charging on both ends (i.e. at home and at the place you are visiting).

Maybe that scenario is too much to handle so that trip, you rent a car. But how many times a year to you make that trip? For us, it’s typically once. The other 363 days, we could easily live with the “constraints” of today’s Model S. We would not miss the 50 or so trips to the gas station either. Nor would we miss the cost of fuel.

Now, obviously, the Model S is expensive. But it isn’t expensive vs. a 7 Series BMW or Audi A8 that’s well equipped. It costs less to run — by a lot. It saves you a lot of trips to gas stations. And you can take it >pretty much everywhere you take your gas-powered car<.

You want to call that a niche vehicle? Fine. I'd say when the next-generation Tesla is delivered in 2015 (the cheaper one), that niche is going to encompass "most auto buyers".

The amazing thing is, this isn’t even a money issue! You don’t need to spend 100k on a car.

There are inexpensive options out there right now. Leaf, Coda. If you find those designs distasteful, then go for a Ford Focus. There’s nothing ‘niche’ about 95 percent of the commuter vehicles in major cities. Maybe it would be better to say that electrics could replace pretty much every second commuter car out there. That’s a lot of cars. That’s a lot less pollution. Seems like a no brainer to me…but, alas, change is hard isn’t it?

Wait, whaaa….????? Trust me, I want to know the worst case too, but don’t lie about it. Geez, a man is only as good as his word, and the Instant you’re caught lying, your word has become worthless. Standing UP for that kind of behavior…. wow, just wow.

If you don’t have a dog in this race, as you claim, why smear Tesla by calling their website a “gotcha blog” ? And why call the telemetry logging “spying” when you could just as easily frame Broder as a Luddite idiot too stupid to think that the world’s most advanced production car might have on oaf telemetry logs.

You’re backing the wrong horse. Don’t come to the defense of fellow journalists when they fail to uphold the integrity of their profession. You’re like a cop covering for another dirty cop who got caught planting evidence.

Joann, If you read the reports, Tesla does not ‘Spy on Operators’. The test drive agreement presumably signed by Mr. Broder allows Tesla to record this information and this is not enabled in the consumer version. This digital record has already noted a number of discrepancies between Mr. Broder’s reporting and the trip logs, and has also lead to new details, such as Mr. Broder’s claim that he drove over a half mile in a McDonald’s parking lot looking for the charge station. As a journalist, I would hope that you would applaud both parties trying to determine the truth since it is so often found somewhere in the middle ground.

I am also surprised by your comment that Electrics are “For people who don’t need to drive more than a hundred or so miles on a daily basis…” I just looked it up and the Pike Research Survey finds that 82% of respondents drive 40 miles or less every day. With the EPA range for the Tesla of 265 miles on a full charge, it would appear that an electric car with this range would likely serve over 95% of consumer needs. With most families having two cars, replacing one with an electric seems like an increasingly viable option as costs continue to decline.